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Cynthia
- Crossville, TN
- United States
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Got to 'push' the compost too. Four years ago when we started 'working' the never before worked land on our newly purchased farm we bartered some aged manure from a local horse farm, worked in compost, some bone meal and some blood meal to - have ha…
Comment Wall (9 comments)
- At 7:57am on May 31, 2009,
Anh Collins said…
- Wanna chat with me on cam?, come see me here You'll enjoy it. I promise!!!! realamateurwebcams.info
- At 10:20am on January 20, 2009,
Jared said… - Oh, did you get any snow?
- At 10:20am on January 20, 2009,
Jared said…
- Thanks Cynthia! I'm originally from Union City, Tn but moved to Raleigh to start working on a masters. I grew spinach and beets from September to April last year in my house. Had lettuce, carrots, and cabbage in fall; mache and claytonia in the winter. It was a great experience!
- At 10:31am on January 7, 2009,
Ruby Brown said… - Sorry you had bad luck with Coop seed this year. Could it have been the weather or some other variable and not the seed. Do you get your soil tested every year. We don't every year as we usually have good luck. We don't grow completely organic and my husband fertilizes heavy with 15/15/15. Sometimes he fertilizes too much--so much so that the soil sometimes looks green, and I can't convince him that organic methods work. We over plant so we do get an abundance of produce usually. We do plant more seed than recommended. Yes, we overdo things a bit, but if we were really into homesteading, we would be more careful. I know organic works, but we don't have a ready supply of chicken manure or aged manure. When we purchase it locally it has not been cared for properly and has a lot of weed seed in it.
We haven't tried pole beens in a while. We did try them once on the corn, but it didn't work good for us. Since we have big gardens, we prefer to grow each thing separately as it is easier to care for. When we tried the old favorite Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans, they produced very abundantly, but we like the flavor of the White Half Runners we discussed (glad you like them too) better, and I can up to 100 to 200 quarts a year for the winter for Johnnie and I and our married children, and church suppers. The White Half Runners climb for us so much that we started sticking them. Our method is to drive metal fence posts into the ground every 20 feet or so on 100 foot rows. They drive into the soil better after a big rain when the ground is soft. then he uses bailing wire number 9 to stretch between the poles, at the top, and at the bottom. Then he wraps jute or twine between the two wires. The half runners still go over the top, but this is an excellent method if you grow a lot of beans. You must have a lot of bicycle tires for the method you are using--it will be interesting to hear how they turn out.
Ruby Brown
- At 11:45pm on January 6, 2009,
Ruby Brown said…
- Hi Cynthia,
My parents used Burpee's Seed Catalog almost exclusively and always had real success with their products. Yes, I'm thinking about ordering some seeds that are hard to find locally. We have a Farmer's Coop in Manchester. We've had the best success with their White Half Runner Green Beans, sometimes called Mountain Half-Runners. They need to be stuck for the best results because they are good climbers. We get our seed Irish Potatoes from them, and they never fail us.
It's interesting how your mother planted her sweet potato seed. She must have found an excellent spot. My parents would save a few sweet potatoes all winter (I wish I could remember what brand they bought) and in about late March they would make a cold frame with wooden sides and a glass top or piece of clear plastic, put sand in the box, and put a few sweet potatoes that were beginning to sprout in the box, water it good, put the lid on the box, open it on very warm days, and keep it closed when the weather dipped. The potatoes would quickly sprout and grow several seedlings. Sweet Potatoes love warm weather, so they waited until all danger of frost had passed and the soil warmed to 55 or 60 degrees. Then they would prepare the soil well and dig a small hole about 2 feet apart and pull off a sweet potato sprout and put it in a hole, put in a dipper full of water, and pack the soil around it. Sweet potatoes don't like to touch the fertilizer, so he would put a handful of a balanced fertilizer, 10-10-10 into the hole, and dig it in the soil good before he dug the finished hole to plant the sweet potato sprout which should have at least two well-formed leaves. If you can find the right brand of sweet potato for TN weather, it should grow well in your rocky soil--but it might not have a smooth shape as the rocks would cause them to be a little crooked, but it shouldn't hurt the taste. You could try mixing a little sand in a few holes to experiment as they like sandy loam which we had in Alabama and good drainage. Let me know how they come out in the straw bales. My guess is that they will love that method. You could try buying a few sweet potato's and let the grandchildren grow your sweet potato sets for you and they would love it. When the sweet potato begins to sprout as it will before long, just fill a glass with water, stand a sweet potato on its end, and place it in the glass of water. Put it in a sunny window, and before long the sprouts will begin to grow and they will have beautiful green vines before long.
We like the Better Boy Tomato plants too. We can usually get them at the Coop. We try several varieties of tomatoes. We like some of the heirloom tomatoes--Brandywine and Pink German are two of the best. We like them even better than Better Boy. We like the heirloom Pineapple tomato, which is yellow with red streaks in it and is a very mild tomato. All these produce hugh tomatoes, sometimes weighing a pound or more. There's a Seed Saver's Magazine which sells a lot of the heirloom varieties if you are interested, and you can save the seed from these heirloom varieties if you are interested in rally sustainable agriculture. I would like to begin saving seeds as my parents did--its a real art and some trouble to do it right. They did it to save money and to have them always available because we lived far away from good stores. Without Burpee's Seed Catalog, and the Sear's Roebuck Catalog, we would have been up the creek without a paddle as the old timer's would say if we didn't save our seed and pinch pennies every where we could.
The Farmer Cooperatives are a very good source for almost anything we need. They have the recommended varieties of almost everything for our local area, and they are not stingy with the amount of seed like some of the magazines are. Parks seeds are always good, but for many kinds of seeds they only give you 10 seeds in a packet. Sweet corn at Parks is very expensive, and by the time you pay high postage rates, and tax, my orders reach $100 before I turn around. So I'm going almost completely Coop this year. Wal-Mart is not a bad place to get good quality bedding plants for cabbage, broccoli, herbs, and lots of things. I usually go with the ones with the Southern Living symbal on them. But beware, the cheap Mexican laborer. Either they can't read English or they get in a hurry and sometimes the plant varieties are labeled wrong.
That happened to me last year with my tomatoes and I had a very disappointing crop of tomatoes from Wal -Mart's nursery.
With 10 acres you can do so much. If I had 10 acres, I would grow my own chickens for meat, eggs, and manure, or white rabbits for the meat and manure and that you grandchildren would love them. With 10 acres I can envision tremendous landscaping possibilites. All kinds of trees and shrubs would grace that mountain. Do you have a mountain overlook? We did growing up on Sand Mountain. We overlooked the beautiful Tennessee River. I have 8 acres of land there and I dream about going back, but things have changed so much and as long as my husband lives we will be content to live here with our three and one-half acres. Blessings to you and your grandchildren. Ruby
- At 10:49pm on January 5, 2009,
Ruby Brown said…
- Happy New Year Cynthia. I'm sorry about your father. Mine has been gone since 1984. I still miss him and his gardening expertise. Mother had a green thumb and could grow anything well.
I have been thinking about trying the potatoes in the straw above ground, since I had friends in Alabama who had good success with that method. Since we have plenty of land, because of your review, we will continue to plant them in the ground. We have good success with Irish Potatoes. With Sweet Potatoes, we had good success one year, and since have not been able to repeat it. There seems to be black rot one year, and the next they grew so fast they cracked. Do you have a good variety of sweet potato for TN?
Ruby
- At 12:27am on January 2, 2009,
Ruby Brown said…
- Hi Cynthia
I'm glad to know that you live in Crossville, TN. Since I live in Manchester, we are only about 60-70 miles apart. We've had good luck and bad luck with fruit trees. Several years ago we had good success with apple trees in our yard. They were practically bug free, but my husband did spray them. The spray made him sick so we cut the trees down. We planted new trees from a different company when we purchased more land behind us. We must have gotten very poor stock because no matter what we did the trees never took hold. Bugs ate what fruit we did get and the apples were small and knobby. We had problems with the grapes--mostly the birds ate them, and then the Japanese Beetles came and devastated them. We decided the local fruit market was our best option. Crossville is more mountainous than here, and you should be better able to grow better apples because the mountain air is cooler than here. Crow Mountain, in NE Alabama, has a wonderful apple orchard and their prices are far better and cheaper than anything we could grow--so that is where we go to get wonderful fruits at very reasonable prices. We especially like their Matsu Apples which are a cross between yellow delicious and a tart apple, thus making them a very good eating apple and a good keeper.
We do have considerable success with vegetables and grow a wide variety of them.
I'm looking forward to getting to know you as well. I'm sorry about the delay in answering your comment--you may have seen on my other blogs, that my mother passed away on December 17, and I've needed to take time out for family. My husband and I have lost both our parents now, but we have several brothers and sisters, two children, and 6 grandchildren--minus one. One grandson, Jeffery, almost 19 was killed in a car accident last year. Gardening is a wonderful hobby. I use it summer and winter as a meditation garden and a place to be close to GOD and find renewal of my spirit. I have a woodland garden with lots of native trees and native plants, with benches scattered around for observing birds of many species, and for just enjoying the scenery--which often includes deer, squirrels, coons, a gray fox, groundhogs, and rabbits. I even saw a white eagle once in my giant red oak tree.
Today, I've been perusing seed catalogs, making up a dream garden list for this year. I like to try something new every year. How about you?
Ruby Brown
- At 4:29pm on December 19, 2008,
Matthew Stover said… - Cynthia, I need to provide some photo update of my garden. I'll be sure to let you know.
- At 3:39pm on December 18, 2008,
Matthew Stover said…
- Hi Cynthia, I just started Kitchen Gardeners TN. I hope you will join as we're trying to build a strong group here in TN.
Profile Information
- Where do you live and garden?
- Crossville, TN
- How long have you been growing food?
- forever!
- Dream garden travel destination:
- I've already been to them all!
- Favorite foods:
- Tomatoes, cucumbers and asparagus
Cynthia's Photos
KG Day - Help us choose a date!
Kitchen Garden Day has traditionally been celebrated at the end of August which is a great time for gardens in temperate, northern climates but not a great time for many other gardeners around the world (e.g. August is winter in the southern hemisphere, monsoon season in India, too hot for many gardeners in southern states, etc.).
We're exploring the possibility of changing the date to the spring and would like your input. Please answer our poll here.
We're exploring the possibility of changing the date to the spring and would like your input. Please answer our poll here.
Latest Activity
Hi,
Wonderful colors, makes me hunger. Enjoy!
I started my first garden ever in late May!
Thanks to all my friends and everyone on here, I feel I have been soooo blessed!
I can't wait to work my soil and begin again in March!!!!!!!
I think this might need it's own category, don't you? Tomatoes are one of the most popular things to grow and we've been placing them in all kinds of groups, but the fact is we almost all grow them, and they have specific needs.
sorry I meant GOURMET.
Hi everyone,
I got my information from the 2010 catolog, I left the website so anyone could look the product up. The catolog says that it is safe for vegetables,that the oil repellent in some bugs & suppresses feeding instincts in others. I have not…
Could that couple have been Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon? I was fortunate to attend one of their presentations at the SW Michigan Harvest Fest '07. It was inspiring!! What energy and ideals. With feature articles in print media and great local exp…
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
found.this.interesting.film.tell.me.what.you.think
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Several people have experienced difficulty putting working links into comments and blogs etc and I know it is clumsy.... so here is how you do it.....
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Created by Ian Jan 27, 2009 at 4:27pm. Last updated by Ian Jan 27.
HOW TO - MAKE COMPOST
Recently there was an excellent discussion about composting. I’ve pulled together all the various comments here. You can also watch KGI's video on composting here.
KATE’S ADVICE
I used to have a tumbler that we made from a wine-barrel but
1 you have to fill it up all at once
2. it seemed mostly
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To view notes that are in the system hit the "all notes" button above.
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If you read this and have any suggestions then please leave a comment on my page or email me.
Ian
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